Ep. 89: The Teacher As Filmmaker/Spike Lee Part One

Photo Credit: Anders Krusberg/ Peabody Award

Transcript:

Melissa Milner 0:09

In this Teacher As Filmmaker minisode, I share Spike Lee's thoughts on working with actors. In one part of his MasterClass, this amazing film director talks about how he inspires the best performance from his actors. As I listened to him share this valuable information, I was struck by the connection to teaching. So first, I'm going to list out his important points: Establish trust and respect with your actors, Talk to your actors early, Listen, Respect them, Tell them what they are doing right, and Pull aside for private critique. So obviously, these are teacher moves. As teachers, we all want to do this at the beginning of the year, we want to take time to build relationships. And on a movie set or in a classroom, or anywhere, people want to feel that they're trusted and respected. When Spike Lee was talking about how he talks to his actors early, it mostly was about when he is filming something, or when he's rehearsing it. And he's noticing that it's just not seeming right. He doesn't want to wait to get to the filming, or he doesn't want to wait and rehearse it that many times, the way he thinks maybe is the wrong way. He wants to get to his actor early. And I think most students appreciate that. They don't want to waste their time doing something to then find out it was the wrong way.

His third point was to listen, which I don't think there's much to say about that other than really, truly listen. And then he says, again, respect them. So even after listening, even if you don't agree with what they're saying, you find ways to still show that you respect them. And the fifth one, tell them what they are doing, right? We always are trying to do that with students. And I think it's important when we're looking at assessing students, we need to pay attention to what they're doing right... what they can do. And then we can look at the other piece where you know, you need to work on this or work on that. And Spike Lee talks about, you know, doing that privately giving that critique privately, which of course is very important. Spike Lee goes on to explain that, obviously, not all actors are the same. So your job as a director or teacher is to find out quickly what they do best and talk to them privately, and address the issues. And you don't want anything to continue to disrupt the shooting of the scene or in the case of teaching, you don't want anything disrupting the learning.

Lastly, he talks about doing more takes in order to get what you need from the actor. So when teaching more takes does not necessarily mean the teacher does more teaching. It means more practice for the student, maybe small group or one on one work to have more time with the concept being taught. Some students need to do things multiple times, or do things in different ways to fully understand. I am going to be sharing more from Spike Lee's MasterClass in the next minisode. For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www. theteacheras.com You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner and I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap.